Here’s a post that deserves a quick response:
Andrew Sullivan can’t be so excused – he was supporting "more troops" virtually up to the moment Bush began signalling support for the idea. Coincidence? He just happened to stop bashing Bush for not supplying more troops to stabilize Baghdad at the very moment he decided to bash Bush for doing precisely that?
People can have differing opinions on the surge, but one person can’t possibly have so many positions, all of which seem to be suspiciously driven by an automatic gainsaying of whatever Bush might be doing this week.
Er, my position has long been that this occupation was under-manned, from the first months on. That’s still my position. My worry about the surge is that it is too little and too late. I wanted more troops all along, and deemed 50,000 to be the minimum needed to make a real difference now. No gainsaying; no positioning; a clear principle maintained consistently, applied to shifting circumstances on the ground. I agree with Fred Kagan and John McCain that an insufficent surge for too short a time is the worst of all worlds. But unlike Kagan and McCain, I haven’t abandoned that view for short-term partisan purposes.
The Dish 